the man is five times

[abhisheks901]

right : the man is five times as old as his grandson. (SC 6th edition, page 184)

wrong: the man is five times older than his grandson.

second sentence technically says that man is six times as old as his grandson.
Here the second sentence is declared wrong just because the meaning is unlikely; the author probably meant "five times as old". how can we decide what the author meant to say? it is very much possible that he actually intends to say "six times as old as".

thanks

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Although the second sentence is the kind of thing that we'd be likely to hear (or say), it's incorrect according to the slightly traditional rules of grammar as followed by GMAT. I like your creative thinking - that it could mean 'six times as old as' - but that doesn't solve the problem. The point is that, on GMAT, we can say 'older than', but not 'five times older than'. This is just one of those rules that you need to learn to do well on the test.